A Season of Excitement and Adventure – Issue #99

Hello Explorer,
This past Friday, I spotted the first ant queen of the season running around! This means that the nuptial flight season has officially begun in Tzaneen! The best part of it all is that the rest of the country will be following shortly. The first nuptial flights of the season are always the most exciting and exhilarating, but why?

Ant keeping is a fascinating and exciting hobby with a lot to offer. You can catch new queens and keep various colonies in a small space, feeding your ants is always exciting, especially if they are voracious eaters, and then there is always the challenge of keeping your colonies contained and preventing them from escaping. While this may seem simple at first, more often than not, you will find ants defying the laws of physics and breaking through any barrier you put in their way. But that's a story for another day.
The main challenge with ant keeping is the off-season, or winter. During autumn and winter, your ants will hibernate or go into diapause. Ants that hibernate will stop all activity and just sit in their nest, not moving at all. Maybe there will be the occasional move to a new spot or trophallaxis if someone is hungry, but no activity outside of the nest whatsoever. Ants that go into diapause will still have some activity outside of the nest, but it is greatly limited and there is little to no foraging or feeding. Ants in diapause may drink a little sugar water or honey, but in very small quantities, without the colony reaction and swarming that happens in spring or summer.
The first nuptial flights, however, are a time of great excitement, as they signify the start of the active season for your ants! It is a time to collect new queens to start more colonies, start feeding your ants properly, and enjoy their activity to the fullest again!
I have seen with all of my colonies, from the Tawny Balbyters (Camponotus fulvopilosus) to the Ring-bum Millipede Munchers (Plectroctena mandibularis), to the African Big Headed Ants (Pheidole megacephala) and the Troglodyte Trapjaws (Odontomachus troglodytes), that they all show a significant increase in activity on the same day that the nuptial flights begin.
I have been observing this phenomenon for a few consecutive years now, and each year I see the same trend. I can now say with certainty that the ideal conditions that trigger the initial nuptial flights also indicate to even captive species that it is time to get active and that spring has arrived.
The ideal conditions for the initial nuptial flights include a rise in temperatures, rain that leads to increased humidity, and a subsequent hot day after the rain. I therefore believe that it is not as simple as the time of year and an increase in temperature that triggers the activity in the colonies, but the fluctuations in environmental conditions that follow the first few proper hot days of the season, a good rainstorm, and the changes that the increased moisture brings to the environment.
The intriguing part is that colonies kept indoors, with stable temperatures, react exactly the same as wild colonies that are exposed directly to all the temperature, moisture, and humidity changes in the environment. Consequently, I believe that the change in atmospheric pressure plays an important role in triggering the activity in the ants.
I will continue to explain one experiment that I have done this winter to test this hypothesis in an upcoming newsletter.
What else are you excited for this spring? Are you planning on going to see interesting, odd, or rare animal behaviour this season? What ant species are you hoping to find this season?

If you would like to send me a message with your answers, feel free to do so on Instagram or Twitter @abugmanslife or via email to [email protected].

PS: Sorry for the slight delay this week, I am working on some very cool stuff that you should see in the next two weeks that will make this slight delay worth it!